To record and get feedback from the world regarding Islay High Schools move down the ICT route

Tuesday, 11 September 2007

Chaos Theory II

Its been a busy week. We have been rolling out the UMPC's to all the pupils. A small number of 3rd years have still to get them but I have been trying avoid Certificated classes and when I am free they aren't. When they are free I am teaching. (I have a full timetable myself this year).

Therefore I had a delegation stop me in the corridor at lunchtime today, voicing their concern. They were desperate to get going with the UMPC's. The place I was going at lunchtime was the school library to run a drop in surgery on any problems or questions the pupils may have. I had 35 turn up. 4 had a problem the rest had questions.

I am planning to run these sessions on a Tuesday and a Thursday and I am sure the numbers will ease off, I hope.

I have also had one example of the opposite from a pupil who has said to me, "I am bored with this".

I am glad that the group were putting pressure on me to get them out and I am delighted that such a large number want to learn more in their own time . It showed that the pupils, on the whole, want them and can see a point. Now I just need to make sure that the point they see is an educational one. I will leave you to come back with a definition of 'Educational use'

The Islay High School Project

1. Developing the leadership potential and capacity of the whole school, Staff and Pupils
2. Introducing Vocational Courses to the curriculum
3. Removing the age and stage restrictions from the certificated courses.
4. Developing the use of ICT to support the curriculum

I am heavily involved with the ICT strand so that is what I will be talking about mainly. Though, of course, the other strands will be brought in as well.
So what are we planning in the ICT Strand?

Every Teacher has a Tablet PC
A wireless network
Wireless Projectors in every teaching area
A presentation space in the Assembly Hall
A Media Server
A Class Server
Existing courses digitised
S1 'Benchmarked' for IC3 Giving them individual curriculum in S1/2
Once these are in place then give every pupil a UMPC computer

All of these are in Partnership with Microsoft, Dell, Diageo (Large local employer) and Prodigy (Certiport solution provider).

Maybe more partners in the future
We have just started down this route. I am sure we will have lots of challenges ahead.